NantWorks Announces Two Health Care Partnerships

Two units of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks holding company have announced new collaborations in health information technology and cancer drug development.

The Los Angeles billionaire’s health care technology company, NantHealth, on Tuesday announced an electronic health records partnership with the Clinton Foundation. The partnership will roll out NantHealth’s Intelligent Clinical Operating System in Central Arkansas and the Coachella Valley, two regions targeted by the foundation.

The foundation’s goal is standardization of digital medical records. Nantworks iCOS is capable of pulling data from dozens of competing electronic medical record systems to create a profile of an individual patient’s medical history and current health regimen.

“Our common goal is to raise the standard of healthcare for all Americans, especially those who are underserved, by giving doctors in hard-pressed urban clinics and distant rural offices in Arkansas and the Coachella Valley the same information and intellectual advantages that providers in the best teaching hospitals have,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement.

Another NantWorks subsidiary, NantBioScience, on Monday announced that cancer drugmaker Celgene Corp. was making an investment of $75 million in the young West L.A. drug developer.

As part of the latest deal, Celgene will receive an option to license a certain number of product candidates developed by NantBioScience, including the two experimental cancer drugs based on the drug technology platform that Abraxis developed under Soon-Shiong. More than $100 million has been invested in the platform to date, the company said.

“We intend to make obsolete the common understanding that cancer treatments, developed under the age old dogma of 'maximum tolerated dose,' may work but only by wreaking terrible side effects, bringing patients to the brink of death,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement.